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There was once a run-away, hanging around Papa John’s.

Being the concerned citizen I am, I immediately to locate the parent or guardian– not much of a challenge, even from thirty meters, with respect to the cart’s bright red plastic and plainly visible “Target” emblem.

As any concerned citizen would do, I immediately called the run-away’s guardian:

“Ring … ring.”

“Thank you for calling Target on Dell Range. Our store hours are … blah blah blah. Press 1 for an operator.”

“*beep*”

“Ring … ring. Click!”

“Thank you for calling Target. This is Stacy. May I help you locate something this evening?”

“Hey Stacy. It’s Mark. I’m calling from Papa John’s, down the street. Actually, I might help you locate something: a run-away cart.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, well you see, we’ve had this cart hanging around Papa John’s all evening. It seemed lost, so I tried talking to it. My Cartese is a little rough; all I could make out was something about ‘trouble at home … bastards … they don’t understand … joining the circus.’ Quickly surmising the situation, I realized it was a run-away!”

“Uh huh.”

“It’s not a big deal– I mean, it seems like a nice cart and all, but Papa John’s has a policy against loitering. It says it right on the door: ‘No Loitering.’ So, what I’m saying is that it doesn’t have to go home, but it can’t stay here.”

“I see. Well, I’ll tell them.”

“Good deal. Thanks, Stacy.”

“Bye-bye.”

Whoever “them” is, anyway. Huh.

—

Five hours later, as Cory and I walked out the front door, I noticed that, what-d’ya-know, the cart was still hanging around in our parking lot!

The concerned citizen in me said “gee, maybe I should push this down the street to Target.” But then the sarcastic asshole in me thought “gee, wouldn’t it be funny if…”

So. Target being West, we set out East– the cart and I. We crossed the Sam’s Club parking lot, and the cart gave me a free ride down the incline to the parking-lot next door. At long last, arrived under the bright blue neon: “Wal-Mart. Lower Prices, Always!”

The first obstacle was the greeter (a.k.a. the person who watches to make sure you don’t bring in stuff you’re not supposed to). Assuming the air of a “serious shopper,” I brazenly pushed my cart through the sliding door and towards the designated greeter.

The greeter glanced up, but I paid him no mind. Satisfied that I was just another “serious” late-night shopper, her returned to sorting a pile of clothes (by size, I hope, not color!). Thinking a sigh of relief, we walked and rolled into the Food Center.

Once inside, I didn’t really know what to do. So we wandered around, just me and my bright-red Target cart. Two drunks noticed me. “Hey kid,” they slurred, “don’t ya know that’s a Target cart?” I winked back, and continued on my way.

We strolled through the Food Center and veered left towards Electronics. Meandering through Electronics we stopping to marvel at the worthless e-Machines computers being sold and continued on our way. Meeting no resistance, we trekked on, through sporting goods and auto-repair. But our good fortune could only last so long…

Approaching the pharmacy, we nearly collided with a floor cleaning machine + operator, coming around the blind corner of the isle. The operator gave me a dirty look and I meekly apologized, continuing on my way thinking “whew! That was a close one!”

Nearly out of cosmetics, a red-headed girl stocking the shelves finally noticed. “Hey,” she said, “you have a Target cart!”

“What? Me? Where?!” I responded, caught a little off guard. While she laughed, I resumed “serious shopper” and we made our get-away!

We paced pace past the checkout-stands, having nearly come full-circle. Sensing the time was right, I ditched my beloved (if somewhat confused) cart between two racks of clothes, feigned complete innocence, and walked alone toward the door.

On my way out, the greeter was still sorting clothes. He glanced up, and then I was gone, laughing as I went.

Photos from last night’s LAN party can be found here.

Last week I spent seven days in the Wind River Range with Sagar, my Dad, and one of his co-workers, named Bob.

We left Cheyenne early Friday morning, and stopped in Pinedale at a quintessential small-town American burger stand–the Sugar Shack–and loaded up on beef and milk-shakes for the week. Driving up the steep, winding road to the Elkhart Park trailhead, we stopped off to take in the panorama of the Wind River Range– running some 210km through western Wyoming. Flagging down an impromptu photographer, we smiled and let the Winds fill the background.

We parked in the half-empty parking lot, signed into the trailhead register, and set off– our packs loaded down, but with a spring in our step. We hiked through the warm afternoon, stopping off at the aptly named Photographer’s Point for a spanning view of the range we’d soon come to call home. We camped at Hobbs Lake, on a shelf some 50′ above the water’s edge. Our tent faced out, over the water.

Our first “objective” was to hike Fremont Peak– Wyoming’s third highest peak (behind Gannet Peak’s 4,207m and Grand Teton’s 4,198m) climb, and highest non-technical ascent, measuring in at a respectable 4,189m (13,743′). We camped out at the base of Titcomb Basin the night before. We set out for the peak at 7:00am. By 11:00 we had reached the “saddle,” where the “real” climb began. Sucking hard on the oxygen-thin air, we went up, up, up– over the jagged boulders and sliding shale. A veritable gale wind greeted us at the top, adding to the vertigo of the 500m dropoff to the Upper Fremont Glacier below. The view was indescribable– jutting peaks, shear walls of rocks, massive glaciers– stretching to the horizon in three directions

At the top, there’s a canister with a “sign-in” book for everyone who climbs the peak. Jerry and I added our names: a week since the last entry, and only a few pages after Jerry’s previous entry– from August 2005.

Looking at our map the next day, we concluded that we could save ourselves a few miles by taking a cut-off along side the river that fed out of Island Lake, rather than walking back to the Indian Basin turnoff and then to Fremont Crossing. We followed a well-worn outfitter trail for a while, which led us to a beautiful campsite on the northern edge of Island lake. From there on, the trail petered out and we just followed the river. There were two points along the way where we had to resort to class-5 climbing (with our packs on, mind you!), but we all made it to the other side.

Bob’s comment was: “Whew! That scared the daylights out of me! I’ve never done anything that technical before.”

Sagar’s comment was: “Wow! That was awesome. The next time someone asks me if I want to take a short-cut through the Winds, my answer will be ‘yes!'”

Passable? Yes. But only on foot, and not for the faint hearted!

Being in the bushwhacking state of mind, we bushwhacked our way to Big Water Slide (about 1 km SW of Fremont Crossing) and set up camp. The fishing in the pond at the slide’s base was fair, and we had fish for dinner.

The highlight of the trip, for me, was seeing the fish jump at Big water Slide. I’ve read, of course, about Alaskan Salmon swimming miles upstream to deposit their eggs, but to see it… The fish were trout, of course, but always something like this: a fish would vault itself out of the water, into the air– a meter or more, in a perfect arc, up the slide. Smacking into the rock, it would struggle with incredible vigour against the crushing flow of the slide, trying to swim faster up than the pounding down of the water. Invariably, the fish would be pushed back down, but invariably, another fish would try, and another, and another… such tenacity and strength!

From Big Water Slide we followed the Highline Trail (also aptly named, seldom dipping below 10,000 feet!) to the base of Stroud Peak. We camped on the tundra in Shannon Pass, without a tree in view. From the top of Stroud Peak (3,718m) our brightly colored tents at “base camp” were entirely lost in the expansive rocky perfection of the tundra.

Heading back below tree-line the next day, we hiked toward Bomar Lake. I hiked with Sagar, and Jerry with Bob. We were separated along the way, (a wrong turn) but, fortunately, if all roads in Europe lead to Rome, then all trails in the Winds must lead to Bomar Lake– where we met up an hour later, by different paths. Jerry sampled the fishing after lunch, and then we headed down the trail to Trapper Lake, for our last night in the woods. Jerry and I fished without much luck, aside from a dozen or so fish that were just large enough to wrap their mouth around our flies– six inches, at most.

We roasted marshmallows and stayed up as the sun went down. The lake was beautiful: as Conrad writes: “a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but more profound.” The sky gradually darkened, and I found myself smiling to look at the trail below– an 18 inch strip of boot-trodden dust: our super-highway, our way here, our way home. The lake, beyond, was dotted with the rippling rings of bouncing insects and feeding fish– as calm and quiet as the shore and rising trees on the other side.

Unmolested, unpolluted and untarnished, I wondered how many times more I’ll enjoy such incomparable beauty, how many more times my heart will be equally at rest. I reflect the past with great reverence for those like Presidents Grant and Teddy Roosevelt, by whose efforts the Bridger wilderness has been preserved. And, I look to the future with no small trepidation– trepidation of development, encroachment, pollution, destruction. This year alone, President Bush cut funding for national parks by $100 million, funding for the Clean Water Act by $200 million, and funding for the Forest Service by an additional $107 million, while ignoring international efforts to reduce carbon monoxide emmissions and other pollution. But for now, our wilderness areas remain untouched by human hands. In the morning we scattered our firepit, leaving no trace that we had been, and again took to our trail.

We hiked out, the last day, on the unmaintained Pine Creek Trail. The trail was difficult, but our packs were light and showers and soft beds drew us on. We made the last 10 miles (and 4,500′ of vertical climbing) in great time, and we were soon enjoying the plentiful water at the trail head.

We stopped on the way down to look back and identify the peaks we had climbed and the route we had taken. It was a week well enjoyed, in a range of majestic mountains– mountains I am marvelously privileged to have access to.

—

Select photos are available here.

Many thanks to my Dad for planning and organizing the trip!

If you need me, I’ll be here:

Otherwise, I’ll be back in a week.

So. I’m “doing” my birthday, this year– call it base materialism. Call it a fall from grace. Call it a betrayal of principle. Call it what you like, but I mean, I’m broke. And I’m a college student. And there’re some things that I’d like to have. So… yeah. Hey! Birthday! Here I come!

That’s the 26th, mind you. On the 26th of July, at 6:00PM (that’s Mountain Standard Time, Sagar– don’t you try to get all smart on me!), I will have obtained the age of 20 years old. Or, put another way, I will have graced the world with my presence for a full 20 years (that’s just over ten and a half million minutes, mind you–man, I just had to go all out, if ya know what I mean!). Oh, I jest. For the most-part, anyway. =)

But anyhow. Back to the point. I have consorted with my base, materialist self (heh), and generated a list of items most likely to bring me … material happiness? Hmm. What-ev. Here we go:

Items on my Amazon.com Wish List

A new battery for my Dell Latitude D600 laptop (6-Cell, 53-WHr Primary Battery (Item Number 312-0191)). Call 800-357-DELL, option 3. $132 (eesh!)

A replacement battery for my beloved 3rd Gen iPod — Link

An 18″x24″ print of Hieronymus Bosch’s Christ Carrying The Cross (Click the link)

A vegetarian cookbook (with big, bright pictures)

A “Kiss the Cook” kitchen apron (and then, of course, let me cook you dinner!)

For a more generic approach, gift cards to Safeway and Target would be well-used this fall. See: starving college student. Heh.

Alternatively–as always– a donation to a charity of your choice (I’m partial to the Parikrma Foundation) in my name would be greatly appreciated (a big thanks to those who have contributed previously!) and definately preferable. Just send me a nice card. =)